Trent Reznor Answers the Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Around the time Trent Reznor began to win Grammys, the prolific musician behind the band Nine Inch Nails started to “become more comfortable” with the idea of thinking of himself as a composer instead of just a rock star. And after scoring two of David Fincher’s most recent films—”The Social Network” and the American version of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”—Reznor has now returned to one of his first true loves: videogames.

When Activision and Treyarch announced this past July that Reznor was writing the theme song for the just-released Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, the news was met with equal parts of curiosity and excitement. Wasn’t this the same guy, after all, that raged endlessly against corporate interests affecting artistic expression now working for the largest videogame publisher in the United States? And hadn’t he spent much of his career in Nine Inch Nails mocking the sort of “militainment” culture that Call of Duty itself perpetuates? On the eve of the game’s launch, Speakeasy caught up with Reznor to hear his thoughts about the game industry and what drew him to Call of Duty.

You started working on games way back in 1996 with the original Quake. But then took an extended leave, if you can call it that, from the industry. Why such a big gap?

There wasn’t really any kind of career trajectory or plan. Never, now that I think about it [laughs]. Quakecame about because I was so blown away by id Software’s work back in the day. We became friends when Nine Inch Nails went through Texas. They brought me into the fold of what they were working on.

It seemed interesting to me, challenging. I’d always been a fan of gaming. I also worked on Doom 3 a bit, but then that just sprawled into something that went beyond what I was able to do time-wise, commitment-wise.

In the last few years, I think I’ve become more comfortable with myself as a composer. When the opportunity to work on “The Social Network” came up, it seemed exciting. I was really looking at it, as I do most things now, in terms of what would be an interesting challenge—if I could add something to that project. That’s really the barometer more so than any kind of planned out, “I’m gonna do this to do that, and then use these to get to that.” When Call of Duty came across my radar, it was exciting for that reason—what I could do with that franchise. And, here we are.

You’ve been a fan of videogames since before they became something new and trendy that other musicians started working on. What games really struck you and drew you to the medium?

I was already very interested in electronics and computers, so games just very interesting to me from the very beginning. I mean, being fascinated when the first Pong machines showed up at the arcade. Watching Space Invaders and Asteroids when they first hit. My mother’s quarter jar was being raided fairly regularly. I was fascinated by it, because it felt to me like a really engaging new form of entertainment. I loved these abstract puzzles that could be created with such a small amount of code; these mystery boxes were being installed in the pizza shops around the whole town. I made a network of friends who I met through their three-letter initials that I would see on the game’s high-score screens.

It’s been fascinating to watch it evolve from there to home consoles to what it’s turned into today—these very epic, many, many million dollar projects like Call of Duty on one hand, and then seeing a new breed of indie game developers.

Yeah, the image of a studio like id Software when it was working on the original Quake is so much more similar in the size, scale, and general craziness to the way that indie developers work today than a company like Treyarch. With that in mind, what are the kinds of games you like playing today and how do they compare to the ones your remember playing in your childhood?

I’ve watched from a distance. You know, in the id Software days in the early nineties it was just a handful of people. You could make a really interesting, compelling, world-changing game with six months to a year and five, six, seven, eight guys. That was Quake. You see that turn into Doom 3, which was a hundred guys, multiple years, and striving for this kind of cinematic experience. Cubicles of people making assets versus the kind of off-the-cuff guerrilla-style creativity of the early days. I could see that change. And history shows us a lot of times that’s stumbled into pretty bad games, or shop-closing misfires.

I see a lot of parallels in the record industry and the film industry where, as budgets go up, the creativity seems to go down. It’s a lot easier to make Rocky 6 because we can predict that we’ll make this much from it versus a new title. And then what eventually happens—and I’m not saying that it’s obvious here—is that you see the marketplace weaken and the gamer get weary of the same games that all kind of feel the same. Because they are the same, with new graphics.

I’m not trying to be judgmental here; I see it from all sides. I think what’s interesting to me about Call of Duty in particular is I’ve always looked at the game in recent years as, for this kind of game—this no-holds-barred, no expense spared, bombast—in this blockbuster arena, it’s very well done.

I walked into Treyarch studios and was just like, “Holy sh–!” It blew my mind that all of these pieces get coordinated. It was several months before it was finished, and you see all these different guys working on assets. These guys are doing this, this team’s doing that, these people are doing that, and they’re all tied into this, someone’s got to coordinate that. In my world, when I’m trying to do a record, it’s me and two other guys. We all just have to remember to show up at the same time. If we’re doing a tour, there might fifty people.

Now on one side, that is sort of cool. But on the other side…I just watched “Indie Game: The Movie” the other day. Seeing those very home-brewed, passion-filled projects, I think it’s cool that there is this potential marketplace where someone can reach a lot of people. There are systems set up where indie game developers can reach masses. Whether it be Minecraft or Super Meat Boy, you know, it can find its audience out there.

I’m glad you brought that up, because there’s a very poignant moment in “Indie Game: The Movie” where Tommy Refenese, the programmer for Super Meat Boy, says “I would never want to go work on a game like Call of Duty or Halo: Reach, because I think those games are sh–.” Historically, you haven’t always had the nicest things to say about record labels. How did you feel entering into the biggest corporate powerhouse of the videogame industry?

I mean, my issues with record labels have usually stemmed around creative meddling. Having been on one for a long time, it’s like: if there ever is money to be made, you’re going to make all the money. So at least let me express myself, don’t get in the way of the art. When art gets compromised to try to appeal to the marketplace—that’s been at the root of most of my problems, aside from criminal business practices and other little treats like that you get along the way.

But I will say this: I see a lot of films, and they’re not all art house films. I can enjoy bombast, I can enjoy lowbrow entertainment, I can enjoy big summer blockbusters. I’m able to sit back and ask myself, “Was that entertaining?”

I was very much aware of what I was getting into with Call of Duty. I know the pros and cons of that in terms of the perception out there. I was flattered they’d ask me. When I met with them and watched what they were up to, I saw this passion. I saw the depth of how they’ve approached this project from a writing perspective—the sweat that’s gone into it.

It was inspiring, to be quite honest with you. I left those meetings thinking, “F— yeah!” You know? “Alright, let me see what I can do with this.” And if they’d come back and said, “What we want is John Williams, patriotic,” well I’m not really the right guy for that. But that wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted something a bit more ominous, a bit more melancholy, restrained, and angry. And I thought, well let me see from a purely compositional place is this something that’s challenging and interesting to me? And it was.

I didn’t mean for that to sound defensive. I’ve bought all the Call of Duty games, played them pretty much all through, and enjoyed the majority of them for the most part.

You’ve said in previous interviews that you really didn’t want to go for a big orchestral, Hollywood-y sound. What kind of sound or tone did you want instead?

The first thing I did when meeting with the Treyarch team is I said, “Listen, what do you guys want from me? When you think of the scenes and the placement of this theme living, what are you hearing in your head?” And then I listened to them, because they’re clearly much more intimate with this game—they’ve lived and breathed this thing for a long time.

And then I just went away and worked on some things. And what felt right to me instinctually was something that felt it shared the sense of remorse and dread; the longing, melancholy, and hesitation that they explained to me the character was feeling. I wanted to take something that was a bit down but give it some balls, give it some aggression. So that equated to something that was kind of a blend of rock band instrumentation—guitar, bass, drums—but set in something that was darker. Sexy isn’t the right word…but, intriguing.

Speaking of giving the sound some balls, you have a song on “The Downward Spiral”called “Big Man with a Gun,” which I’ve always taken as poking fun at the intensity of weapon-fetishism in pop culture. Do you see any irony in making a song like that in the mid-nineties and then working on these shooters that many critics claim add to the flurry of gun-fetishism that we have today?

That’s an interesting point I hadn’t really thought of until right now. Thinking back to what I would have been thinking when I wrote that track, it was touching on that. But it was more something in the context of that album, in the throes of self-destruction. It was pretty much the final stage before whatever happens dramatically in that album where it changes into the other side.

[Pause] I hadn’t thought about this for a long time. I’m talking myself into a corner. Again, if an offer comes up for something, my thought process usually goes, “Hm, interesting or not?” And if it passes the interesting test, then it gets into what I could bring to the table for this. Can I modify what I do, can I expand what I do, to challenge myself and deliver something interesting for that container? That’s really how I thought about it much more so than thinking about the content of the game. I mean, you raise an interesting point. I really hadn’t thought that much about it.